Computing devices such as laptops, netbooks, desktops and servers support one or more low power and/or power saving states. One highly supported power saving standard is defined by the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) Specification, Revision 3.0b, Oct. 10, 1106. In particular, the ACPI Specification defines system power states G0-G3, device power states D0-D1, and processor states C0-C3. The system power state G0 refers to a fully powered system state, the device power state D0 refers to a fully powered device state, and the processor power states C0 refers to a fully-powered operating state. The other power states refer to off states or various levels of reduced power states in which portions of the system, device, and/or processor may be halted or turned-off in order to reduce power consumed by the system, device and/or processor. To take advantage of such lower power states, computing devices may detect periods of system, device, and/or processor inactivity and place such inactive or idle components in a lower power state to conserve energy.
Due to network protocol implementations, the processor of the computing device processes incoming requests from a network. In particular, the processor is involved in the processing of incoming networking packets such as Internet Protocol (IP) packets, Transport Control Protocol (TCP) packets, Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol packets, Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) packets, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) packets, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol packets, application keep alive packets, as well as others. As such, network packets received during periods in which the computing device is otherwise idle may result in waking the system and processor from a low power state in order to process the incoming network packets. If the processor of a computing device is interrupted incessantly during idle periods to process incoming network packets, then the processor and the computing device may remain in a full power state despite being “idle” and otherwise suitable for entering or remaining in a low power state. Such packet processing consumes power on laptops, desktops, servers and/or other wall-powered computing devices, and reduces battery life on laptops, netbooks, and other battery powered computing devices.